Support XWord Info

Zhouqin Burnikel notes: This puzzle was accepted in August 2012. I was inspired by ELON MUSK, but could not make him work due to the short letter count.

Jeff Chen notes: A business-oriented puzzle, right up my alley. And specializing in entrepreneurs, even better! Back in 2002, I had the good fortune ... more

Jeff Chen notes: A business-oriented puzzle, right up my alley. And specializing in entrepreneurs, even better! Back in 2002, I had the good fortune to help a friend start a company from ground zero, Acucela Inc.. The start-up experience was rough, costing me many 80+ hour weeks and taking several years off my life, but I wouldn't change it for the world. Who knows if emixustat will end up working for dry form age-related macular degeneration, but if nothing else, being able to create jobs for dozens of people was pretty cool.

I enjoy communicating with C.C. — it's always fun to hear about her process. She mentioned that she originally wanted to focus on high-tech entrepreneurs — I love that desire for a "tight" theme — but couldn't make the symmetry work out. So I like the fact that she retained crossword symmetry by choosing four titans on industry for the long theme spots (highlighted below). We both lamented the fact that she couldn't make my main man JERRY YANG and YAHOO work. (I didn't know him, but he graduated a few years after me.) What can you do.

Crossing themers will always up the difficulty of a puzzle. C.C. does well to choose the pinwheel layout, which helps a lot with spacing. I really like her use of cheater squares in the very SW and NE — any open 5x5 section gets hard to fill cleanly, and with the J of JEFF BEZOS in place, things are even harder (J in the middle of a word limits one's options). Generally I like to see those 5x5 sections broken up or sectioned off, i.e. with a black square at the intersection of A DARE / OVERFED. This would cause a big cascade of changes in the puzzle skeleton of course, but it sure would be nice to avoid the ODELL / ALTE crossing and the A DARE partial. The rest of the puzzle is pretty nice and clean, so the NE corner stuck out to me.

Business themes aren't going to be for everyone (this one was memorable to me but certainly didn't appeal to everyone), but today's was right in my wheelhouse. Although it would have been fantastic if C.C. could have achieved her goal of being more specific (focusing only on high-tech or dot com entrepreneurs), it still made me smile.